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If I remember correctly, in OWoD, the second sight ability that imbued Hunters have would show mages as different from normal humans.

Which is like, you know, means whatever you want it mean. Hunters are racist against mages.

Witch Finders is an interesting book about evil Mages. It could easily be about just going after the 'bad' Mages like Scelesti and such.

Although at the same time probably not actual full on Supernal Mages because a Hunter is pretty much never going to be able to get one of them. Just too powerful.

Not...necessarily. The CofD rules are pretty deadly overall. Mages are quite squishy and vulnerable to surprise attacks. It's the retaliation from other mages investigating the death of the first one that hunters have almost no countermeasures against. And 2nd edition Awakening closed the almost unbelievably powerful ritual magic exploits, so a couple of occult countermeasures or endowments could even up that playing field enough that hunters pose a real threat.

I really disagree.

For a start, Hunters that aren't sleepwalkers have no way of knowing that magic actually exists because of the Sleeping Curse

but even if they do, Mages are so tremendously dangerous and Mortals have almost no defence against them that's it really isn't going to happen

If I remember correctly, in OWoD, the second sight ability that imbued Hunters have would show mages as different from normal humans.

Which is like, you know, means whatever you want it mean. Hunters are racist against mages.

Witch Finders is an interesting book about evil Mages. It could easily be about just going after the 'bad' Mages like Scelesti and such.

Although at the same time probably not actual full on Supernal Mages because a Hunter is pretty much never going to be able to get one of them. Just too powerful.

Not...necessarily. The CofD rules are pretty deadly overall. Mages are quite squishy and vulnerable to surprise attacks. It's the retaliation from other mages investigating the death of the first one that hunters have almost no countermeasures against. And 2nd edition Awakening closed the almost unbelievably powerful ritual magic exploits, so a couple of occult countermeasures or endowments could even up that playing field enough that hunters pose a real threat.

I really disagree.

For a start, Hunters that aren't sleepwalkers have no way of knowing that magic actually exists because of the Sleeping Curse

but even if they do, Mages are so tremendously dangerous and Mortals have almost no defence against them that's it really isn't going to happen

There are ways around the Sleeping Curse, and I wouldn't be shocked if Hunters ended up counting as a general exception. Though, I did think the Awakening 2e rules on the Sleeping Curse were far too confining.

And, look, a mage is deadly, no doubt, but they're very squishy, and the CofD rules are very deadly for everyone. And how deadly an individual mage is going to be will vary by mage, their preparations, etc. Ye Olde Sniper Rifles and Car Bombs are pretty effective.

This discussion comes up quite a bit on the Mage forums and the opinion of the developer, when he has commented, has been (paraphrasing) "Hunters vs Mages is not a scenario which is in any way fun for Hunters or challenging for Mages. In Hunter games, don't use Mages because they're just too power and impossible to put the hurt on. In Mage games, Hunters aren't antagonists they're pawns and interesting groups to co-opt and investigate."

Because the thing is, who do you even know to hit? How are you going to track them down? How do you do that without them noticing when you have no idea what they can do? Like, outside of some incredibly fringe cases where the Hunters are stupendously lucky it's just... not going to happen. Even if they can get past the curse and manage to identify a Mage who they then decide to kill, actually tracking them down and killing them is a whole other game to play, and if the Mage gets a single whiff of them that's it. Game over, basically.

Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

Mage is designed to play Mage, not to provide Hunter antagonists. I'm definitely not interested in modifying Mage to mollify any other line, which is why they are by far the most powerful Supernaturals in CofD with maybe Mummies as an exception.

Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

Mage is designed to play Mage, not to provide Hunter antagonists. I'm definitely not interested in modifying Mage to mollify any other line, which is why they are by far the most powerful Supernaturals in CofD with maybe Mummies as an exception.

Yeah, that's what Scelesti and Seers are for.

The hammer of justice will be brought down. Don't resist. Welcome to the 25th Ward.

Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

Mage is designed to play Mage, not to provide Hunter antagonists. I'm definitely not interested in modifying Mage to mollify any other line, which is why they are by far the most powerful Supernaturals in CofD with maybe Mummies as an exception.

I'd question if Mage is really designed to play Mage, given how poorly the magic system actually reflects how magic is depicted in the setting, but it's not really my point (and I was more thinking of Hunters as Mage antagonists), but the knock-on effects of this attitude towards Mage has drained a lot of the life out of Mage itself. There's really no "Wake the Tiger" in nMage, which makes it very difficult to fit in with the rest of the CofD, contrast with a mundane backdrop, explain why Mages don't rule the world, confines the range of antagonists, etc.

Part of this is just the magic system being (as far as I can tell) intentionally designed to be dull and uninteresting.

I mean, I disagree. I think it's a fun and interesting system, but as far as Mage fitting in with the CofD, I'm not really bothered if it does or doesn't, because I'm playing Mage. If Mage doesn't play nice with Vampire that's not really a problem because I'm not playing Vampire

I think Mage stands along really well. Clearly you don't like it, but I think it's pretty great and that honestly it's probably even better for just not using any other CofD stuff when playing Mage.

Well, I'm basically in the break-up stage with the CofD generally, not just Mage. I find the system bloated and tedious, the proliferation of useless merits annoying, and the absolute retrograde movement away from the improvements made for VtR 2nd in terms of writing, handling of material, etc, very frustrating. As an example, I picked up A Thousand Years of Night, and here is my official review: It's fine. I really like the approach they used for elders. The mechanical elements are mediocre to bad. The writing is approximately 50% filler. It's fine. Not good, not great, not bad, not terrible. This basically has been the standard for the CofD lately.

As much as I like aspects of the games, they're either moving away from me or I'm moving away from them. After the garbage fire that was Beast, the all-in attitude on Mage being a power fantasy that completely ditches its alleged genre, and Werewolf 2nd's problems, it's always one step forward, two steps back. No faith anymore.

But, to clarify, when I say it doesn't fit in with the CofD, I don't mean in some kind of game balance sense in crossover. There's no reason the splats need to be "balanced" with one another. If you want Hunters to represent a real challenge to default power level Mages, they need some special assets - they need to be Sleepwalkers with anti-Magic gear and endowments, that sort of thing. This is fine.

I mean in terms of tone, theme, genre - there's a grounded horror aesthetic to the overall CofD they've been gradually abandoning and it's sad to see it lose what made it special in the first place, bit by bit. And the "Mage is just a different game!" argument you occasionally see raised just misses this point. It's supposed to be grounded, gritty, dangerous, and the magic system is just 'Press Button, Receive Cat."

But, yeah, I think I'm just leaving the orbit. People loved the Mummy supplements, for example, and I thought they were both laughably bad.

Honestly, I dislike Mage being in the same world as vampire, werewolves, changlings, ect.. they just don't fit. Like Vampires can deal with werewolves if they need to, changlings are hidding from Fae creatures so they don't interact hardly. But Mages? One smart mage would destroy all of vampire society, make the werewolves their bitch, and could lock the Fae from ever entering our world in the first place. If this was Marvel, the others would be the Defenders level characters while Mage would be things Doctor Strange would be dealing with. (Or for those who read Original Sins, the things

Nick Fury fought that Doctor Strange didn't even knew existed.

) It's also why I wouldn't have Demon: The Descent in the same world, because it doesn't fit with Machine Gods and clockwork angels. For Mages to be able to fit, they would need to have their power scaled down to maybe Dresden Files levels. Which no one would ever want because Mage players want to be demi-god creatures who bend reality with a whim.

Glancing through the Mage(Ascension) stuff on Drivethru, and I recall hearing that there were some really good stories based on it? Any idea what they were called? They might have just been short stories in the supplemental books, something about a specific character.

Glancing through the Mage(Ascension) stuff on Drivethru, and I recall hearing that there were some really good stories based on it? Any idea what they were called? They might have just been short stories in the supplemental books, something about a specific character.

Glancing through the Mage(Ascension) stuff on Drivethru, and I recall hearing that there were some really good stories based on it? Any idea what they were called? They might have just been short stories in the supplemental books, something about a specific character.

Dark Eras 2 is on kickstarter. Started with 6 eras, 2 more have been added through stretch goals. It's going pretty slow, but it is going. I for one love this sort of stuff so I'm excited and I hope it does raise a good amount.

Got this in my e-mail, apparently White-Wolf is going into paid mods territory

The doors of the Storytellers Vault
are now open!
It is with great excitement and pride that we announce the Storytellers Vault is now available!

We know that fans of the World of Darkness have long aspired to bring your own unique World of Darkness creations to the masses, and now you can as part of the Storytellers Vault, White Wolf’s new creator content program.

Beginning with Vampire: The Masquerade, aspiring writers, artists, and game designers can now publish their non-canonical table top RPG supplements and fiction stories worldwide in a language of your choosing, and make half of the revenue as your royalty.

To assist content creators making the best possible products, the Storytellers Vault offers a considerable variety of graphical layout tools including pre-made design templates, and art-packs to choose from.

I guess I feel like custom campaigns aren't really their strong point, more of providing a sandbox. I've never been interested in the ones they've provided as examples(namely in Mage's Keys to the Supernal Tarot and Seers of the Throne), more bits and pieces from them. I liked the Votaries of the Throne a lot, for instance.

The hammer of justice will be brought down. Don't resist. Welcome to the 25th Ward.

I think Pringles original intention was to make tennis balls... but on the day the rubber was supposed to show up a truckload of potatoes came. Pringles is a laid-back company, so they just said, "Fuck it, cut em up!".